Recently on NPR, there were two stories, seemingly unrelated, that came together as ringing testimony to the core strength of the United States of America.
A young Sikh-American woman who makes films described a scenario in which one of her professors, also Sikh, was riding a local bus somewhere in the U.S. shortly after 9/11. The professor was aware that anti-Muslim, anti-Sikh sentiment had spiked in the country since the attack, but he had thus far avoided any such unpleasantness himself.
Then a man sitting in the front of the bus stood up, turned and pointed at the professor. “Why don’t you and your terrorist friends go back to where you came from,” he shouted.
(At this point in the story, what do you think is going to happen?)
The professor froze and tried to make himself appear as non-threatening as possible. Before the man could say or do anything else, the people on the bus between the two men stood up and told the man to back off. In the words of the woman telling the story to NPR, “we, the people, stood up.”
The professor got off at the next stop. So did the man. He approached the professor as the people on the bus watched, holding their collective breath. The man thrust his arm toward the professor, palm open, to shake hands. The professor took his hand.
“I’m sorry,” said the man. “My daughter was killed in the second tower, and I have been on the edge ever since. I should not have spoken to you as I did.”
The second story involved an NPR reporter of mixed ethnic heritage telling about his love of “Star Trek.” The original series was about ten years old when the reporter, at that time only 6, saw his first episode. He was immediately drawn to Dr. Spock because Spock, like the reporter was a blend of two ethnicities.
As a teenager, the reporter went on, he realized that the command deck of the Starship Enterprise was multi-ethnic, including an African-American woman who was fourth in command, a representation of the ethnic diversity of the United States.
True, the reporter acknowledged, the fourth in command was never photographed sitting in the command chair; this was, after all, only the 1970s. But the command deck was an ethnic rainbow hurtling through space.
I suspect that few of you celebrated on September 16 this year. You might if you were Mexican, and you celebrate Mexican Independence Day (no, that is not what Cinco de Mayo celebrates). Or you would if you had been married on that date, as were Judy and I.
History wonks might have done because September 16, 2016 was celebrated as Constitution Day (really, it was September 17, but that was a Saturday and unsuitable as a holiday), marking the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787.
People of a Certain Age, because you attended school when high school graduates could be reasonably expected to know U.S. History, you know that the Preamble of the Constitution begins “We the People.” Sometimes in our history, the “we” has been hard to see. In such times, partisans tend to view “we” as applying only to those who are like them or agree with them or both. Seeing individuals as unique persons instead of members of a gender or ethnic group or political party, etc. gives way to a sense of clan, where fear of “other” takes hold.
Whether or not you believe we are now in one of those periods might depend upon your politics. Regardless, our history has such times. If your lineage is Irish, Italian, Eastern European, African, Chinese, Japanese, Mexican—the list is long—at some point in our history, people like you have been excluded because of ethnicity.
But the command deck of the Enterprise represents the ideal United States of America, does it not? The Preamble is inclusive: we the people. The Declaration of Independence is decisive: all men are created equal.
Paralleling the historical record above is a longer and deeper litany of “unremembered acts of kindness and of love,” as Wordsworth put it, performed by average people every day. The people on the bus became a “we” protecting a man of a different faith from intimidation. The threatening man, when rescued from his grief by the others, extended his hand in friendship to the man he had threatened just a moment before, taking his step toward “we.”
We teach children to pledge allegiance to “one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” The indivisible part alludes to the Civil War. The one nation idea reflects our aspirations politically. Liberty and justice for all is where the pledge becomes a matter of morality for we, the people.
There is much heat and little light as political figures argue about whether or not something is constitutional. The fact is, in our system, the Constitution means what the Supreme Court says it means at any given moment.
What we get to define is the “we” in the Preamble. The people on the bus, and the creators of the Enterprise had visions of “we.” What are ours?
Daniel E. White
October 3, 2016